This Tuesday evening, more than 4,000 journalists from the Associated Press (AP) news agency are spread across the thousands of county and district offices across the United States where votes are being counted. It is on them that the announcement of the result depends, according to a rite which has been repeated in every election since 1848 in a country where there is still no national electoral commission to count and communicate the votes.
At least one AP “vote count” reporter is assigned to each of the more than 3,000 counties and congressional districts in all 50 U.S. states where about 7,000 federal, state and local votes are currently taking place. When the polls close, the reporter arrives at that local office, waits for a vote total, writes it down, and calls one of the thousands of office workers on another AP team by telephone to add this data to its system and Discuss the doubts and possible problems there.
The telephone may seem old-fashioned, but AP relies on this system for the value of human conversation. “It’s always worked for us. This allows us to have an interaction with the person who is calling to ask questions,” explains David Scott, AP vice president responsible for coordinating the electoral operation, including the announcement of the winner of the elections, to elDiario.es. “For example, if someone calls to report a result and says there are 1,000 votes for Donald Trump and we see that there are only 500 people registered to vote in that county, instead of If you have to contact the reporter again, we can talk about it and carry out quality checks at the same time as you call to communicate these results.
Meanwhile, an automated system alerts if there is anything that doesn’t add up to the vote total or is statistically improbable. On the other hand, data available on local authority websites is tabulated when published, just like other information obtained directly from electoral representatives. In case of discrepancies, the data is rechecked. It is not about data supporting others, but about detecting possible errors.
Automation of the data reception system is combined with human control and traditional technological tools led by a team of engineers and other technicians. “We do not use any type of generative artificial intelligence in our vote counting process. We haven’t found any tools that add value to what we do,” says Scott. In total, more than 5,000 people are dedicated to election night alone.
In the United States, there is no national election commission responsible for adding up and reporting county votes. The Federal Election Commission is responsible for general campaign finance rules and only releases full data when it is fully certified by states a few weeks after the election.
The decision
As part of AP’s extensive process, once the county’s data is clear, it goes to the Election Decision Team, made up of about 60 people, including Scott and Julie Pace, AP’s executive director. With the data in hand, they make the most important decisions of the night: approving the AP’s declaration of who won each election in each state and who won the presidency of the United States by adding up at least 270 electoral votes (these accumulate for victory in each state).
Scott explains that the final decision never rests with one person: “There are checks and balances throughout our process. Someone looks at a state, then an analyst looks at it. If you both agree, the file goes to a decision editor. Ultimately, at the last call of the race, as we approach 270, the Washington bureau chief and our executive director are part of the conversation. And we should all agree that the data supports this claim.
A risky job
Counting has always been a complex operation in a country where more than 160 million people now vote, registering and voting differently depending on the county where they live. Potentially 244 million people are eligible to vote, but turnout is around 70% at most.
The recount process has even become dangerous since the rise of Donald Trump, who in 2020 refused to acknowledge his defeat – now he only does so when he makes a mistake – and encouraged his supporters to protest to stop the count when he advanced and showed that there were more votes for his rival.
Attacks and threats against local officials responsible for election administration increased and election work became risky in key states. The AP agency has deployed its security protocols to also protect its journalists responsible for monitoring, even if its vice-president says he does not remember any incidents against them.
The news agency, which is a non-profit cooperative, insists it is carrying out electoral work as it does every election despite current tensions around the process. “The stakes in this year’s elections regarding vote counting are the same as always. We elect a president. We are electing a new Congress. “We elect state legislatures all over the country,” Scott says. “The pressure we put on ourselves to count votes quickly and accurately is still high. We are always driven by data. “We are always guided by the facts… This has always been a monumental task and we take it on with great respect and a sense of responsibility.”
More explanations
What AP is trying to do in this election is explain in more detail the process by which it counts votes and announces who won the election.
“One of the things that has changed, both because of the environment in the United States and the way we approach the campaign, is that we know there will be some skepticism or questions as to our declaration as to the winner. We saw this in the last election, because of the way politicians questioned the integrity of elections even when there was no evidence that anything was wrong,” explained Julie Pace , executive director of AP, to elDiario.es in an interview. .in April. “The way we’ve tried to approach it this year is to focus on transparency around our race winner announcements. It is no longer enough to say that AP declared candidate X the winner. “We have to say why we did it… We want to make sure that when we declare the winner of the presidential election, people actually understand what’s behind it, because we think it’s a very important way to build trust.”
Thus, in addition to the explanatory guides available on the AP website and articles on each election, also in Spanish, the news of the winner’s declaration includes a reminder of the process.
“Too close to call”
When votes indicate a vote difference of less than 0.5% between candidates, AP’s practice is not to declare a winner. Additionally, the agency also does not report on congressional elections with a margin of less than a thousand votes or on state legislative elections where the difference is less than 2 percent or less than 100 votes (it s (these are elections with fewer voters).
In these cases, the race is declared ““too close also call” (too tight to declare). When votes are still being counted and there is not enough information about what will happen in this process, the race is declared “too early to call» (too early to declare).
Some media, such as New York TimesCNN or Fox, make their own winner declarations, but largely using AP data. Others, like public radio NPR, are awaiting the AP’s announcement. In 2020, the agency declared Joe Biden the winner at 11:26 a.m. EST on Saturday, November 7. That was a minute after it was declared that the Democrat had won in Pennsylvania.
In November 2000, for example, the AP did not declare the winner of the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore because the race was too close in that year’s deciding state, Florida. Other media outlets made their own, sometimes conflicting, projections, but AP stood firm in saying the winner could not be determined with certainty. The winner was decided a few weeks later by the Supreme Court, which stopped the recount of votes in Florida.
The agency prides itself on having been 99.9% correct in its declarations of the winners of the last general elections, notably presidential, legislative and primary elections.
The last mistake the AP made in a presidential race was in the February 2008 Democratic primaries, when it declared Hillary Clinton the winner in Missouri, even though the winner had been Barack Obama (AP corrected two hours after his first statement). During the 2024 primaries, AP made two false claims during the races of aspiring candidates for local legislatures.
Exciting night
David Scott calls election night “one of the most exciting in journalism,” especially for AP because of the agency’s unique role, which expects to make more than 21,000 updates per hour on the vote across the country.
But it is increasingly common for the winner of presidential elections not to be known on election night. Since the start of the 21st century, the outcome is often not known until the early hours of Wednesday morning or beyond.
“Will we know the result on election night? » I ask Scott. His response: “If I had to make a bet, I would say that history suggests we won’t, but as always, we will follow the facts and data and see where they take us. »
